For various reasons, it may be desirable to modularly install selected avionics equipment onto an aircraft. Conventional solutions for modular installation of avionics equipment include removably mounting an equipment “pod” to an exterior of the aircraft. Various equipment pods may be specialized to perform a variety of equipment-dependent missions, e.g., reconnaissance, electronic jamming, etc., and include sets of avionics equipment pertaining to those missions. For example, an equipment pod suitable for reconnaissance missions may include various cameras and sensors, and may be temporarily mounted on a lower exterior portion of the aircraft. Although the equipment pod may be suitable for meeting mission objectives, external mounting of the equipment pods may be problematic and thus undesirable.
For example, an externally mounted equipment pod may add unwanted bulk to the aircraft, which may adversely affect performance of the aircraft, such as by reducing cruise speed. Accordingly, flight testing may be required to measure any adverse effects the equipment pod may have on aircraft performance. Additionally, external mounting of the equipment pods may be an inefficient use of storage space on the aircraft, such as by occupying external stores of the aircraft instead of utilizing existing internal stores of the aircraft. Moreover, the equipment pods may have limited modularity, i.e., be difficult to customize, in that addition and/or removal of avionics equipment from the pod may be difficult. In other words, the equipment pods may not be fully customizable to meet the needs of any equipment-dependent mission.
A custom reconnaissance assembly having imaging devices for use during reconnaissance missions also exists that replaces a gun assembly in a forward gun bay of certain aircraft. This assembly uses mounting assemblies including fixed or pivot pins with slotted plates or clamp assemblies to secure it to the aircraft airframe. This assembly is not available for different types of aircraft and is limited to the single use of reconnaissance.